BUCKHANNON – Community Care of West Virginia will continue to expand with a new four-story building in downtown Buckhannon, located on North Kanawha Street.

Patricia Collett, chief executive officer of Community Care of West Virginia, attended the Feb. 6 Rotary Club of Buckhannon-Upshur meeting to share details about upcoming projects the federally qualified health center plans to complete.

“You’ll be hearing about one of our projects in the next year or two; it is another expansion of Community Care because we need to meet the needs of the community, and we have run out of space on Main Street,” Collett said. “We are going to be building a new Community Care of West Virginia of Buckhannon building where the Moose Lodge was, and it is going to be a four-story location.”

The new building will double the space Community Care currently has for primary care services, in addition to offering a behavioral services location and an educational center on the fourth floor.

“Every time we open a new facility or a new clinic, we’ve already outgrown it before we typically open the doors, or within a year, we’re out of space, so every time we’re opening a new location, it’s to provide access to care to meet the needs of our communities,” Collett said. “One of the biggest things that I feel like we’re doing right now, that everyone is hearing a lot about, is our behavioral health program.”

She said CCWV’s behavioral health program is one of its fastest-growing areas of health care.

“We are up to six board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrists, and we have about 80 behavioral health professionals working with us right now, meaning case managers, licensed independent clinical social workers, licensed professional counselors – and the list of initials goes on and on – to meet the needs the behavioral health and mental health needs of our communities.”

Collett also brought up their collaboration with West Virginia Wesleyan College, which helped jumpstart a new master’s degree program in Clinical Mental Health Counseling.

“There are not enough practicing providers out there to meet the demands and needs of our community, so that happened because of a conversation I had with Wesleyan about two years ago,” Collett said. “We were talking about how we could work together, and I basically said, ‘What we need is a master’s in clinical therapy program,’ so the first program is up and operational, and we are planning on putting more mental health professionals within our communities.”

Community Care also offers an addiction and recovery program for substance use disorders.

“I can say there is no one in this room who hasn’t been [affected by addiction], either within their family or by having a close friend who has a substance use disorder problem,” Collett said. “It has hit all of us in some way or the other, so we have two board-certified addictionologists and we have one family medicine doctor that’s working on his certification right now, so we will have three.”

“Everything we’ve been doing over the last several years is truly to meet the needs of our communities and working with our wonderful partners like St. Joseph’s Hospital,” Collett said. “Everyone knows if you watch the news, West Virginia is always the last in anything positive or first in anything negative, so we want to provide our services in any way we can.”

Collett has worked with Community Care for 23 years and recently took the reins as CEO after longtime head of CCWV Rick Simon retired.

“I started back in 2000 as the fourth medical provider in a clinic with less than 25 employees, so fast forward to today, and we are over 545 employees; we have gone from one clinic to 17 primary care clinics, 50 school-based health centers, seven pharmacies and continually expanding to meet the needs of our communities,” Collett said.

Collett said she gained invaluable knowledge through Simon’s mentorship and her collaboration with him.

“I had the pleasure of working under his mentorship longer than I worked at Tri County Health Clinic (in Rock Cave),” she said. “We actually started working together over 27 years ago doing some work for Northern Pocahontas County Health Clinic, which was a rural health clinic that I was a provider at ages ago so that started our journey and now we have built Community Care.”

For more details about CCWV’s providers and health care services, visit its website.